No ‘delighted policemen’ at Burntollet?

A line of RUC and B-Specials moves along Hooker Street in Catholic Ardoyne on the night of 14/15 August 1969. (Belfast Telegraph)

—It is unfortunate that Paul Bew’s article in the last issue (HI17.4, July/Aug. 2009) should be entitled ‘The Blind Leading the Blind’.In it he says that, unlike Bernadette Devlin, he ‘did not see anydelighted policemen’ at Burntollet where he was present in January1969. Everyone else who was there did. In the account published somemonths after the event by the late Bowes Egan and myself, the detailsof which have never been challenged, we were able to estimate thenumber of attackers at Burntollet Bridge at about 320, of whom we wereable to identify nearly 100 as members of the Ulster SpecialConstabulary, to whom Bew refers later in his article by their popularname of B-Specials. As their formal name indicates, they were every bitas much policemen as the RUC men they chatted and consorted with.However extra-curricular their activities, they set about theirhandiwork with every display of enthusiasm. In addition, according tothe minister responsible, 116 constables were on duty, as well as abrace of county inspectors, a pair of district inspectors, seven headconstables and seventeen sergeants. Prime Minister O’Neill said at thetime that one member in six of the RUC (c. 500 men) were involved atsome point or other in ‘protecting’ the marchers. As we estimated themarch at this point as 500-strong, there were over 200 people who hadtaken oaths as members of the police present during the attack. Whilethe judgement of ‘delight’ is in part subjective, there arenevertheless some clear indicators that the enthusiasm of the attackerswas matched by many—but not all—of the RUC personnel there. At leasttwo of the reports of eyewitnesses we published had RUC members‘smiling’ and ‘laughing’ while they were chatting to locals who turnedout to be B-Specials. Bernadette Devlin’s account is at least balanced,giving some of the police credit for intervention ‘to stop us beingkilled’.
I believe that Bew’s blindness is not a matter of visual impairment onthe day but of current political denial. This is not just a matter ofpoint-scoring. It is important that we acknowledge historical facts andkeep the record as accurate as possible. Beyond that, however, there isthe more important question of how those facts allow us to interpretevents. I disagree with Bew’s judgement that the importance of themarch ‘cannot be overstated’. The march itself, and even the attack,might have had few lasting consequences were it not for the persistentfailure of the Unionist and British authorities to recognise andconfront the realities of Northern Ireland. While Bew emphasisesO’Neill’s loss of ‘moderate Catholic support’, he does not mention theprime minister’s outburst in the immediate aftermath of the march, northe continuing disgraceful and of course wholly illegal activities ofthe RUC after the march. It was this failure to recognise the realitiesof Northern Ireland, not just in the days but for decades after themarch, which amplified its importance. He does refer to the ‘keyelement’ of London’s strategy as replacing the ‘discreditedB-Specials’—the adjective is Bew’s—‘with a new non-sectarian force, theUlster Defence Regiment’. The UDR, of course, never lived up to thisdescription. The fact that this was a ‘key element’ shows two flaws inLondon’s thinking and action: first, the emphasis on securitysolutions, also evident in O’Neill’s statement after the march; second,a failure to grasp the sectarian nature of the state and itsinstitutions, including the police, as exemplified by their behaviourat Burntollet. As I wrote in my own memoir of the march (HI 16.5,Sept./Oct. 2008), had a robust system of democratic accountability beenput in place, ‘the likelihood of more serious collusion in the matterof murder between the RUC and Loyalist paramilitaries in later yearsmight have been lessened, collusion which still casts its shadow overthe peace process and the new dispensation in Northern Ireland’.Failure to accept the need for such change over many decadesrepresented a real lack of vision, against which Paul Bew’s failure tosee what was in front of him on 4 January 1969 is small potatoes.

—Yoursetc.,
VINCENT McCORMACK
University of Ulster @ Magee

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On this Day

1981 Sir Norman Stronge, former speaker of the Stormont parliament, and his son James were shot dead by the Provisional IRA at their home, Tynan Abbey, close to the Armagh/Monaghan border.

1933 George Moore (80), author, notably of Esther Waters (1894), and leading light in the Irish Literary Revival, died.

1924 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (53), communist revolutionary and premier of the Soviet Union since 1922, died of a stroke.

1922 The Craig–Collins agreement promised an end to the ‘Belfast Boycott’—the ban on northern goods coming into the South—in return for Catholics intimidated out of the Belfast shipyards being allowed to return.

1919 The first Dáil Éireann convened at the Mansion House, Dublin.

Above: Scene from the Battle of Isandlwana, 22 January 1879, the British Army’s heaviest military defeat by the Zulus. (Maynooth University Library)

1879(Jan.21–23)The Battle of Isandlwana/Rorke’s Drift. For many, the six-month Zulu War, prompted by the invasion of King Cetshwayo’s independent kingdom by British colonial forces under Lord Chelmsford, is viewed through the prism of the 1964 movie Zulu, which portrayed, with considerable artistic licence, the epic defence of a mission station—named after Irishman James Rorke, who had a trading store there— by c. 100 British troops (including a dozen or so Irishmen) against c. 3,000 Zulus. Thanks to Chelmsford, this strategically insignificant engagement was widely publicised. The bravery and self-sacrifice of the plucky Brits was applauded—no mention was made, of course, of their execution of c. 500 Zulu prisoners—and no less than eleven VCs were awarded (in contrast with one VC each for the 1944 D-Day landings and the entire Battle of Britain). All of this was designed by Chelmsford to distract British public attention from what had preceded it: the crushing defeat of his army at Isandlwana, with the loss of over 1,300 of his men, including many Irishmen, by the main c. 20,000-strong Zulu army, armed with spears and shields. While British gallantry was duly extolled (such as the heroic last stand of County Leitrim’s Col. Anthony Durnford and the valiant but fatal effort by Dubliner Lt. Nevill Coghill to retrieve his regiment’s colours), her historians are still trying to explain the defeat. Causes include the lack of screwdrivers to loosen the screws on the ammunition boxes. From a Zulu perspective, Isandlwana was a glorious victory—but a pyrrhic one. Cetshwayo knew that the British would regroup and re-invade, which they did. Superior numbers and technology prevailed, and by July, after six more battles, Zululand was entirely subjugated.